Till I Hear You Sing
by XxthesarcasticonexX
Summary: Day 2 of BruceNat week! Quote/Lyrics. And weeks pass, and months pass seasons fly, still you don't walk through the door and in a haze I count the silent days, till I hear you sing once more. / She misses him, but life and the job goes on, and Natasha does it, and she does it best.
AN: Hello! This is a little something I wrote for BruceNat week on Tumblr!

Day 2: Quote/Lyrics.

This is not entirely based on _Till I Hear You Sing_ by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, but I did get inspired for this while listening to the song, so, it counts.

* * *

The great majority of days she didn't even bat an eyelash if she was reminded of it.

Her life had always been about more than one thing -or one person. An intricate web of deceits, and plans, and goals. A web of friends, and colleagues, and Bartons. So she was able to go on, to assign him a special corner inside her mind so she wouldn't forget, safely kept hidden near the back so her life wouldn't stop.

She didn't have a problem with his name, or the conversations which included him and the role he had had within them.

She knew what she had done, assumed the responsibility of it. It had been a gamble, one she had taken and lost. Being conscious of the consequence of her actions and decisions, it made it easier to talk and remember him. It made it easier to admit to Clint and to Fury that even if she could carry on, it didn't mean she hadn't been affected by what had happened.

If there was one thing she both cursed and thanked Clint for, it was his ability to teach her hope. The fleeting sensation and state of being which had been absent from her mind and self for as long as she could remember.

The first time she had felt it, she had hit her friend, had even left him with a black-eye for a couple of days, not used to finding herself in such a vulnerable state. The second time, she hadn't had it in her to repeat her offense towards her best friend, for it was the only thing which had saved her from collapsing after Fury's supposed death.

This time, this time she still didn't know what to do with it. So she spent most of her free time in training, kicking Steve and Sam's ass whenever she could. She spent it verbally sparring with Tony, both trying out the same defense mechanisms with the other, both never mentioning the reason they had suddenly been speaking far more frequently than before. She spent it helping Maria with the new tech's the woman had hired for the new base.

So to everyone, and even to herself, Natasha functioned as normal. She did the job and she did it the best.

But she wasn't a machine, or a brain-washed human. For so long she had been fighting to regain the humanity she had felt had been stripped away from her, she wasn't going to throw her progression all away just because it was now tempting to not feel anything.

She understood then, for even if she had already known the reason, she had never experienced it, why it was the Red Room took pride in dehumanizing its subjects.

Emotions, though they could be controlled, were an unstable variable.

For just as she had days in which no one could tell she had suffered a heartbreak, there were moments when everything came crashing down upon her. Moments when she woke up at night in sweat, haunted by nightmares in which she not only was the cause of the deaths of many innocents, but of the deaths of her friends, of him; their blood staining her body, staining her mind.

She never startled awake, but the sweat on her pillow was evidence enough that no matter how well controlled her reactions to fear were -her body could still out-win her thoughts.

During those days, she quietly made sure to check on everyone. She proved to her mind the irrationality of the images which had disturbed her.

But he wasn't there, she couldn't check on him. Those days, if people squinted hard enough -they could see her fumble and hesitate.

Fury kept reminding her that people always ended up showing up, himself an example of it.

But after six months had passed and nothing had come out of the search, except for the dismantled Quinjet found right in the middle of the Atlantic -which helped no one, her hope started taking on a different form.

It was then the nightmares shifted. Dreams she had probably once considered without importance suddenly started disturbing her sleep, making her wake up from them with a feeling of helplessness, dread and -longing. She never knew what was worst, waking up as the cause of death of those around her, or being witness to it by someone else's hands, without the power to stop it.

None of her distress showed up on her face outside of her four walls. Her head always being held high, her mind always moving on from one subject to the next.

But as the rumors of the fallen air craft spread, more and more agents started talking about Bruce Banner as if he were dead - Hulk including.

She didn't realize she was bothered by the soft comments and staring eyes until she had been genuinely frightened by Sam on one of her sleepless nights.

"Nat, can we talk?"

It was Steve, who finally gathered the courage to talk directly to her about the subject. They all had avoided even mentioning his name with so much caution, it suddenly being uttered by someone other than herself genuinely stunned her.

"And here I thought it was my job to worry about your romantic liaisons." She commented as she hit one of the gym bags.

Steve gave a nervous chuckle, and she could tell it was more because of his fear of being reminded that she had caught him blushing near Sharon Carter, than the fact he had to talk to her about the one thing no one had ever dared to.

With a few kicks to the bag as Steve helped it up and simply observed, Natasha was able to reassure him that there was nothing to worry about. That she had confidence Bruce would show when he felt ready and that she didn't blame anyone for what had happened.

It had been one of the most difficult conversations to ever occur between, filled with awkward pauses and a punch that went just a bit overboard and had ended making Steve stumble for a fraction of a second.

"Captain, Natasha. Tony is here, he's asking for you two." Wanda interrupted their session, the young girl still respectful towards every single superior; the people of Sokovia and her brother's deaths hanging over her in a prominent manner.

"Gotta go babysit." She groaned out.

"Clint called?" Steve asked as he took the training bag down. Natasha shot him a questioning look.

"Clint? I meant Stark."

With his amused laugh all tensions were forgotten and with Stark's arrival, Natasha's troubles were put to the side.

Until her head hit the pillow and her eyes couldn't shut down.

She had never faced any trouble when falling asleep, or when not having to sleep for a day or maybe two. Nightmares had always came and went, but for years, as her head hit the pillow she could lure it into a numb state, surrendering to sleep and to her subconscious.

She felt annoyed more than anything, at her sudden inability to control her mind, to make it stop and rest. Even after waking up from her nightmares, with her demons invading her mind, she could make them stop, she could take charge of her mind and make it surrender to rest. But she felt restless, anxious and she cursed as for the second night in a row she had to step outside her room and wander around the complex.

She didn't stumble upon anyone this time, and she was glad, for she didn't know how she would be able to explain to anyone how she had been lurking around the place for the second night in a row.

She made a stop at the rec room, taking the space in.

It was empty. Usually filled with at least three people chatting away between working hours -or with Rhodey trying to avoid Vision.

At the Tower, what had functioned as a rec room had almost never been empty, with Bruce and herself having taking it in as a second room, filling the night silences with old-fashioned dialogues and music. Bruce's favorites playing in the background as they kept each other company, as they each willingly avoided sleep.

His absence hadn't truly hit her unit that moment. When she looked around and the silence of the room grew into what to Natasha sounded like a cacophony.

She felt them on her cheeks, silently rolling down, touching her lips, salting them with her repressed agony and guilt.

"Damn you, Banner." She spoke the words with a saddened smile, for she could never truly be angry with him for leaving, but she could curse him for being himself and managing to sneak into her life in the way no one had ever managed to do so before.

"And without even realizing it." She finished, the words soft but echoing through the empty room.

On the morning they would have a visit from Maria and someone the woman still wouldn't say. Natasha was supposed to be up before Steve so she could help him prep, take some of the stress off his back. Tomorrow she would wake and life would go on, as it had been doing so for months.

But tonight, tonight she allowed herself that which she hadn't truly done in the past months, she allowed herself to mourn.

So, it was with the sounds of _The Thin Man_ she was finally able to shut her eyes and not open them until he first rays of sunshine seeped through one of windows.

A dreamless night.

She allowed herself a gentle smile before erasing the evidence of her late wanderings.

It was something she would have counted as a weakness and if she submerged too much into the fact, she would ended up displeased and uncomfortable. But even Bruce had told her, back when she would dare fall asleep next to him as they watched one of the classic films he loved so much.

 _"You have an amazing talent for falling asleep during the good parts."_

 _"It's not my fault, the sudden pauses and changes in your breathing pattern function as a sort of lullaby, Banner."_

 _"That –that is very odd and very -you."_

 _"Shut up Banner, I'm trying to sleep before Clint arrives and my babysitting duties double."_

 _He had chuckled and had not uttered a single more word. She had calmly drifted to the breathy laughs of an actress and his relaxing breathing pattern._

It wasn't his voice, his smell was starting to dissipate from her memory, and his breathing pattern she could barely even remember; but the airy laughs and odd idioms were still there, forever planted on the silver screen.

Her constant lullaby, to use when her monsters decided to dominate her life.

 _The day starts, the day ends_

 _Time crawls by_

 _Night steals in, pacing the floor_

 _The moments creep,_

 _Yet I can't bear to sleep_

 _Till I hear you sing_

 _And weeks pass, and months pass_

 _Seasons fly_

 _Still you don't walk through the door_

 _And in a haze_

 _I count the silent days_

 _Till I hear you sing once more._

 _And sometimes at night time_

 _I dream that you are there_

 _But wake holding nothing but the empty air_

 _And years come, and years go_

 _Time runs dry_

 _Still I ache down to the core_

 _My broken soul_

 _Can't be alive and whole_

 _Till I hear you sing once more_

 _And music, your music_

 _It teases at my ear_

 _I turn and it fades away and you're not here_

 _Let hopes pass, let dreams pass_

 _Let them die_

 _Without you, what are they for?_

 _I'll always feel_

 _No more than halfway real_

 _Till I hear you sing once more_


End file.
